Law enforcement agencies have traditionally relied upon patrolling activity to provide a deterrent effect for assigned “beats” or patrol routes in a geographic area that have been assigned to a particular officer. Marked or unmarked law enforcement patrols, whether they be vehicular, airborne, or traditional beat police that walk the patrol routes are intended to create a link between the community and the police agency charged with policing the community, while at the same time providing a visual deterrent to opportunistic crimes. Before the advent of radio communications, such patrol routes were written on cards that established particular locations and times that the law enforcement patrol should be at prior to returning to the precinct. Even with the advent of radio communications, such community patrolling techniques have not disappeared, but are now supported and enhanced through the use of audio and data communications transmitted over radio access networks (RANs).
Such RANs provide for radio communication links to be arranged within the network between a plurality of law enforcement patrols and their respective radio communications units. Such radio communications units may be mobile and may be known as ‘mobile stations’ or ‘subscriber units’ (SUs). At least one other terminal, e.g. used in conjunction with the SUs, may be a fixed terminal, e.g. a base station, eNodeB, repeater, and/or access point. Such a RAN typically includes a system infrastructure that generally includes a network of various fixed terminals, which are in direct radio communication with the SUs. Each of the fixed terminals operating in the RAN may have one or more transceivers which may, for example, serve SUs in a given region or area, known as a ‘cell’ or ‘site’, by radio frequency (RF) communication. The SUs that are in direct communication with a particular fixed terminal are said to be served by the fixed terminal. In one example, all radio communications to and from each SU within the RAN are made via respective serving fixed terminals. Sites of neighboring fixed terminals may be offset from one another and may be non-overlapping or partially or fully overlapping with one another.
RANs may operate according to any one of a number of available industry standard protocols such as, for example, an open media alliance (OMA) push to talk (PTT) over cellular (OMA-PoC) standard, a voice over IP (VoIP) standard, or a PTT over IP (PoIP) standard. Typically, protocols such as PoC, VoIP, and PoIP are implemented over broadband RANs including third generation and fourth generation networks such as third generation partnership project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.
RANs may additionally or alternatively operate according to an industry standard land mobile radio (LMR) protocol such as, for example, the Project 25 (P25) standard defined by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO), or other radio protocols, the Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) standard defined by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), the Digital Private Mobile Radio (dPMR) standard also defined by the ETSI, or the Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) standard also defined by the ETSI. Because these systems generally provide lower throughput than the 3GPP and LTE systems, they are sometimes designated narrowband RANs.
Communications in accordance with any one or more of these protocols or standards, or other protocols or standards, may take place over physical channels in accordance with one or more of a TDMA (time division multiple access), FDMA (frequency divisional multiple access), OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access), or CDMA (code division multiple access) protocols. Subscriber units in RANs such as those set forth above send and receive audio and/or data (e.g., encoded voice, audio, video, control information, data, and/or audio/video streams) in accordance with the designated protocol.
For example, as shown in FIG. 1, a patrollable geographic area 100, which may comprise a plurality of streets, intersections, commercial and residential buildings, parks, and other areas, may include a plurality of law enforcement patrols 112A, 114A, and 118A of different law enforcement patrol types already navigating patrol routes in the area 100. Each law enforcement patrol may be a person and/or vehicle of some type with an associated radio communication unit (e.g., portable or mobile SU) capable of communicating wirelessly with each other and/or with a RAN 126. Such law enforcement patrols 112A, 114A, and 118A may include, for example, a first pedestrian law enforcement patrol 112A (e.g., a marked or unmarked traffic control officer operating on-foot) with an associated SU, a motor vehicle law enforcement patrol 114A (e.g., a marked or unmarked police car) with an associated SU, and a mobile aerial law enforcement patrol 118A (e.g., marked drone or helicopter) with an associated SU. Other potential law enforcement patrols (not illustrated in FIG. 1) of same or different types may fall outside of the area 100, but may be available to proceed to the area 100 as needed.
Each of the law enforcement patrols 112A, 114A, and 118A may, in one example, already be actively using RF resources 128 of the RAN 126, which may be a LMR, LTE, or other type of RAN providing coverage substantially throughout the area 100, the RAN 126 is illustrated in FIG. 1 as including a single fixed terminal 130 coupled to a controller 132 (e.g., radio controller, call controller, PTT server, zone controller, MME, BSC, MSC, site controller, Push-to-Talk controller, or other network device).
A dispatch console 134 may be directly coupled to controller 132, as shown, or may be indirectly coupled to controller 132 via one or more internal or externals networks. The dispatch console 134 allows an administrator or dispatcher at the dispatch console 134 to initiate infrastructure-sourced private and/or group communications to law enforcement patrols 112A, 114A, and 118A, and to participate in private and group communications sourced by law enforcement patrols 112A, 114A, and 118A, among other features and functions.
Law enforcement patrols 112A, 114A, and 118A may be assigned static patrol routes that they are instructed to patrol on a regular basis. Each patrol route may comprise a particular intersecting or non-intersecting set of streets, portions of streets, intersections, parks, commercial and/or residential buildings, among other areas. For example, law enforcement patrol 112A may be assigned a patrol route 152 including a particular street portion, intersections, and park to patrol, law enforcement patrol 114A may be assigned a patrol route 154 including a particular set of streets and intersections to patrol, and law enforcement patrol 118A may be assigned a patrol route 158 including a particular set of streets and alleyways to patrol.
Conventionally, the effects of such law enforcement patrols are not easily visualized or communicated to other law enforcement personnel or to civilian populations, and such patrols are assigned independent of any knowledge of underlying historical or real-time crime statistics and variations in deterrent effects of different types of law enforcement patrols.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method and apparatus for visualizing deterrent effects of law enforcement patrols, and for more intelligently assigning different types of law enforcement patrols to particular patrol routes using knowledge of underlying historical and/or real-time crime trends.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.